


Into this wild Abyss

by thesunsetsea



Category: His Dark Materials (TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-12 20:26:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28516389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesunsetsea/pseuds/thesunsetsea
Summary: As a child she would have wished for Heaven.Later, it was she other shore she had started longing for. Where true paradise lies, where you and I could reign, his words had been.She would have begged him for deliverance once.Marisa and Asriel as they make their way down the endless depth of the Abyss.
Relationships: Lord Asriel/Marisa Coulter
Comments: 6
Kudos: 30





	Into this wild Abyss

_“One always dies too soon – or too late. And yet one’s whole life is complete at that moment, with a line drawn neatly under it, ready for the summing up. You are – your life, and nothing else.” – Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit_

///

Everything was pitch-black. There was not a glint of light, nor a sound that could reveal the presence of four figures, two beings, falling.

The only indication that told her she had lost awareness, however brief it had been, was the feeling of awakening afterwards. What had caused it, she did not know. Her racing heartbeat and the rush of adrenaline in her veins told her she was still falling. Disoriented, she threw her limbs around rather frantically.

“Hold still.” Came a voice out of nothing. It belonged to Lord Asriel, and he was holding Mrs. Coulter’s form to him.

“Asriel?” She could recognise him anywhere.

He reached for one of her hands. “Yes, I’m here. Attach this to your wrist.” He made her wrap her fingers around some leathery material and a metal clasp.

“Unless you want to risk us being separated.”

She fastened the belt around her arm, which he had already adjusted to his own.

“Metatron?”

“Gone.”

He must be gone, for his dazzling light was too, and Marisa recalled the feeling of wings disappearing from her clawed hands. In their final act she had pulled the Lord Regent’s wings down, dragging herself, Asriel and their dæmons down into the Abyss with him. Unlike the two of them, the Angel had been composed purely of Dust, not flesh and bone. Nothing of him remained now.

“Good.”

No matter how long they waited, their eyes did not adapt to the darkness.

Her hands were moist with a warm, sticky material. _Blood_ , she knew when she brought her fingers up to her lips. Whether it was hers or his was impossible to tell.

“It’s nothing.”

“We’re half dead, and you more so than I.” She remembered how Metatron had torn at him.

“We have bigger problems right know, wouldn’t you say?”

“Like splattering to death in what could be any moment now?”

Asriel said, “It’s the Abyss. This falling might never end.”

Only now did she realise how strange the sensation of falling had become. They had reached terminal velocity in the first seconds of their fall, but it was not as fast as was to be expected from the law of gravitation. Neither were they experiencing microgravity. Complete stillness surrounded them, and strangely, they were able to breathe. The two of them discussed these observations, but concluded there was no reasonable explanation for it just yet.

Under different circumstances this would only have excited them more. To discover and experience what no one before them had.

///

_Is this real?_ Marisa found herself asking. _It might be my mind at work, trying to deceive me_. But the falling felt real. So did the stabbing pain of her injuries, and the metallic smell of blood. Asriel’s hands felt real, and the warmth of his body, the only source of heat.

“Is this oblivion, then? Nothingness?” She wondered aloud.

“You think we no longer exist? That we are already gone?”

“We aren’t gone.” But her voice was hesitant. 

“No?”

 _Did_ they exist, in this moment? She allowed herself to muse about this. They must be alive, for she was thinking, was she not? And her dæmon was there. She could not see or hear him, nor feel him physically. But she could _feel_ the connection was there, however weak it was between them, those few invisible strings that kept them together. He wasn’t far.

“We are thinking. Or at least, I am.”

Delighted, Asriel replied in Latin, “Cogito, ergo sum.” 

Dust was crushed beyond existence the moment it was sucked into the Abyss. _But we are part matter_ , Asriel thought. _It might simply take longer_. 

He was convinced there was nothing in this… this in between place, this void. No sky, no earth, no minds, no bodies. Yet somehow, they existed in it now. In a way, he relished the idea.

///

There was no way of telling how much time had passed. They had no notion of time, and no light to guide them.

As they started to grow almost accustomed to the endless descend into gloom, other thoughts that had taken root deep inside Marisa made their way back up. _Lyra. Where was she now? Was she safe?_

As though he had read her thoughts, Asriel spoke. “It is better this way. For her.”

It is what she had thought, too, else she would not be here now _. T_ _o give Lyra time to live and grow up._ And yet…

“But she will fall. She is doomed.”

She felt caged by her mortal flesh that was dragging her further and further down into emptiness, and betrayed by the form of her dæmon that was utterly useless in all this. There was a sudden urge within the woman to dig her nails into her golden monkey’s scalp.

“Lyra will be free. There is nothing greater than that, Marisa!”

“Oh, you fool!” In that moment Mrs. Coulter wished to push herself away from Lord Asriel. “You speak as though you have won the greatest war there ever was. You have not.” _The real battle is the one waged within the individual soul._ Who would save Lyra from that?

“You wouldn’t understand.” He thought she sounded almost bitter. “But I love Lyra with every fiber of my being. Can you not even bear to say the same?”

This left Lord Asriel haunted by a terrifying melancholy which he had struggled wildly to kill countless times before – but never could. _I have never hated her,_ he wanted to say, remembering her words to him in the Adamant tower.

She scoffed when he said nothing, and her fists found his chest with steady blows.

“Would you rather be falling alone then?” He retorted when she didn’t stop.

“I would, yes.” She spat.

“Go, then.”

But neither of Lyra’s parents made an attempt to cut themselves loose from the other.

She wanted to scream. So she did. There were no echoes. The man himself remained silent, but Marisa’s voice was joined by a long, deep roar that could only belong to a certain snow leopard.

Then it was quiet again. And downwards they continued.

///

“All of us are doomed the moment we come into the world,” Asriel was not sure who he was saying these words to.

“But it is not as ominous as we imagine. Our inevitable doom… It makes everything more beautiful.” _Even this fall._

Although she gave no sign of it, she was hanging on his every word.

“You think we are doomed to make choices, because it could lead to sin. It is true that in freedom, most people find sin. But I think that’s rather the point. If our demons can’t dance freely… neither can we.”

She nodded to herself, and thought back to what she had said when they had stood at the edge of the Abyss. _Dust is beautiful._

He had paused, pondering, and finally added in the most delicate way he knew, _“_ Marisa _, if_ original sin existed, it would be the human tendency for self-torment.”

She felt as though he had cut her open with a jagged piece of glass. 

///

“It will end, though.” She muttered.

“What will?”

“This falling. Because we will end. If it isn’t our wounds that kill us, then surely we will die from thirst or hunger. And that is assuming there is indeed no bottom.” 

“I know.” Then he added, “Where do you suppose we’ll go?”

“You already have an answer to that yourself.”

“I want to hear yours.”

As a child she would have wished for Heaven.

Later, it was the other shore she had started longing for. _Where true paradise lies, where you and I could reign,_ his words had been.

She would have begged him for deliverance once.

Asriel’s thumb brushed her lower lip, the gesture almost gentle, and she leaned into his touch. He waited.

Finally she spoke the word she could hardly bear to think of. “Nowhere.”

_By sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return._

When Asriel did not respond, she continued, “We won’t even be part of the real, physical world again, because we are not in any world.” _True oblivion._

It had all started with nothingness, Asriel thought, it was only fitting they would end with that.

“I would have rather we keep falling eternally like this.”

“We would go mad.” She could almost see his eyes flash with savage laughter as he said it. She ran her nails over the side of his cheek and down in neck in response.

 _It would be glorious,_ they agreed in silence.

///

They were beginning to grow cold.

At first Asriel pretended it was like the many times he had prevailed in the bitter Arctic, with the Aurora swaying above him mystically. He longed now to see it again. But most of all, he longed to see _her_ , as she was now. Her dark hair in complete disarray, the fabric of her clothes torn to shreds, her pale skin smeared with crimson. Aching inside, he longed for a time of stolen moments. 

He wanted to dance with her on the brim of chaos.

Despite the coldness, there was a deep yearning burning Marisa from within. _To love someone else enough to forget about yourself for one moment is to be free_ , she thought. The Church talked about throwing off the body and its desires, being no longer a slave to the flesh. _But they did not say that through the flesh we are set free. That our love and desire for another will lift us out of ourselves more cleanly than anything divine._

She wanted to confide in him all of her original sins.

“Asriel–“

“What is it?” The tone of his voice was as wistful as she felt. “Marisa?”

But she had only wanted to hear him say her name, for what would perhaps be the last time. He pressed his lips to her temple.

Somewhere in the dark, not far away, two dæmons continued to fall like their humans, their silver and golden fur mingled together as if one.

At some point the four figures became two, and the two beings stopped being.

For a second, the Dust that came free lit up the man and woman in golden light, before dissolving into nothing. The falling bodies were engulfed by eternal darkness again.

**Author's Note:**

> To me, their ending in The Amber Spyglass is perfect as it is. But for the longest time I have been wondering what exactly the Abyss is, and what happens the moment a person falls into it. And I adore these characters. So here we are…
> 
> This is the first time I’ve written something like this. So I very much welcome any feedback you might have. Hope you enjoyed(:
> 
> Side note: English is not my native language, so forgive me for any mistakes I might’ve made.


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